Ontario general election of 2018: Woeful Wynne washed away by fiscally hardline Ford

The Ontario general election of 2018, covering Canada's most populous province and the federal Canadian capital, Ottawa, brought an end to 15 years of Liberal dominance. In fact, the Liberals polled so badly they won a grand total of just 7 seats, their lowest ever in the history of Ontario, and Premier Kathleen Wynne only held her riding of Don Valley West by 181 votes. A large number of Liberal MPPs (Members of the Provincial Parliament; equivalent to Assembly Member) finished third in many seats they won in 2014, even accounting for redistricting (the Canadian term for boundary changes). The Liberals' defeat is attributable to Kathleen's weak premiership, with her approval rating sinking to as low as 12% on occasion, and she made the serious mistake of conceding five days before polling day, when outgoing leaders only concede after polls have actually closed and exit polls have been published.

Large seat drops for outgoing governing parties are par for the course in Ontario, as are large seat gains for newcomers (in comparison to British elections). The Liberals' drop was enough to cost them "official party status" since 8 seats are needed for that status in Ontario, meaning they will not receive any seats on committees in the Assembly nor any help with staffing costs, and they will not be entitled to ask questions during Oral Questions, the Ontarian equivalent of Question Period which the Canadian House of Commons uses. This is equivalent to Prime Minister's Questions in the UK, where questions can be asked of the governing party of the day by backbenchers.

During the campaign, it was portrayed as a close race between the Progressive Conservatives and the New Democratic Party, with both parties being neck and neck in opinion polls during the final weeks. However, it was Doug Ford (brother of former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford) and the Progressive Conservatives who won in the end, winning 76 seats out of 124, including 13 of the 17 new districts introduced for this election, giving him a secure majority of 25. The NDP actually experienced a greater increase in their share of the vote than the PCs (9.81% vs. 9.25%), but were starting from third place instead of second, having been stuck in third place since the infamous defeat of Bob Rae's NDP administration in 1995. The NDP lost critical momentum in the final week of the campaign; even though their support only dipped slightly to 35% from 38% it was enough to decide the election.

The marginal riding of Kitchener South-Hespeler, newly created for this election, is a key example of a riding the NDP would have won had they remained on par with the PCs in polling terms; in fact it was Progressive Conservative Amy Fee who won it, defeating the NDP's Fitz Vanderpool by just 769 votes (1.81%). The key marginal Toronto suburb of Etobicoke, all three of whose provincial ridings resulted in Progressive Conservative gains from the Liberals (in fact it was none other than Doug Ford who gained Etobicoke North) is another good example, since the NDP did not rise above third place in any Etobicoke riding. The NDP's most spectacular gain this year was of the supposedly rock-solid Liberal riding of Toronto St Paul's on a 26% swing. The NDP were starting from third place provincially in this riding and had never even finished second in the federal riding of Toronto St Paul's covering almost exactly the same area, let alone come close to winning it. Canadian ridings that are as diverse as Toronto St Paul's in terms of ethnicity, language, and religion are normally safely Liberal or are marginal between the Liberals and NDP; the Liberals alienated many of these voters this year in Ontario which also resulted in nearby Toronto Danforth experiencing a 22.4% swing from Liberal to NDP. The NDP managed to win 40 seats, a total second only to Bob Rae's historic win of 1991, and potentially in line to win the province once again.

The Green Party's leader, Mike Schreiner, won the riding of Guelph, making him the first ever Green Party MPP in Ontario; the Canadian Greens are now represented at provincial level in four Canadian provinces. However, their vote share dropped overall by 0.24% due to the squeeze on their voters by the NDP in the more progressive inner-city ridings, not helped by a lack of viable targets outside Guelph. The Trillium Party, represented by former Progressive Conservative MPP Jack McLaren after his expulsion from that caucus after a video recording of him speaking against Francophone rights in Ontario and apparently promising the PCs would repeal them if elected was discovered, fared disastrously. Jack McLaren finished a dismal fifth in his riding of Kanata Carleton with a miserable 3.58% of the vote; the other 25 Trillium Party candidates managed just 251 votes each on average, usually finishing bottom of the poll with less than 1% of the votes cast. It modelled itself after the Wildrose Party of Alberta, but Ontario has no significant market for right-wing populism, unlike Alberta, and there is no longer a significant anti-Francophone population in Ontario. Trillium is not a particularly interesting nor prominent flower, and nor was Jack McLaren ever particularly popular (quite the opposite) so it can at least be said the Trillium Party was accurately named. It polled less than half the votes of the None of the Above Party, which only fielded 16 more candidates and was a single issue party.

The Libertarian Party with 117 candidates and 0.75% of the vote was the highest-polling party unrepresented in the new Ontario Assembly, although the Libertarian Party has a small but loyal following in Canada meaning it will usually beat all but the most popular newcomer parties. No other party in Ontario fielded more than 16 candidates or achieved more than 0.1% of the vote, and the wooden spoon award unsurprisingly went to the Pauper Party of John Turmel, who holds the world record for the most elections contested and lost above a local level.

Due to the fierce contest between the PCs and NDP, turnout rose by 7.1% to 58.4%, an excellent turnout by the standards of provincial elections in Canada, especially with first past the post still being in force; a rerun of the 2007 referendum on proportional representation in Ontario, which resulted in a defeat for proportional representation by a margin of 63.18% to 36.82%, is unlikely to happen in the near future, especially with only the NDP and the Green Party showing support for proportional representation in Canada.